


How Love Feels Between My Fingers

by clarapaget



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, death of a family member, piano lessons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarapaget/pseuds/clarapaget
Summary: Kady teaches Margo how to play the piano.





	How Love Feels Between My Fingers

It was late again. Kady, at the end of the day, when the sun had set and the dark evening sparkled with stars, found herself in the same spot as yesterday. Her mother had died only a week ago; it was crushing, an absolutely damning week for Kady. 

It brought back her memories from long ago, when Kady was young, in the closeness of the night, and her mother would slip away in the middle of the night to dance for money. She could never judge her mother for those actions; Hannah would do anything to try and secure a safe future for her daughter. With the extra money, her mother was able to afford piano lessons for Kady. Now, it was the only thing that Kady could do to feel close to her mother once more. 

Her fingers rested against the keys, unmoving, almost petrified to push out a tune. The rest of the physical kids had gone up to bed; the cottage, downstairs was near deserted. In the couch, under the light of a lamp, sat Margo, Quentin, and Eliot lounging quietly. They would be, Kady thought to herself, unable to understand the strain she was under. Her mother had slipped away through her fingers once more and music, playing the piano, could not bring her back. A lone tear fell down her cheek and she angrily swept it away. 

“You want a drink?” Margo called from her spot next to Eliot. He had his arm around her shoulder, a fruity drink in hand. Margo herself had her head laid against his chest; she looked quite sober compared to her companion. She must’ve spotted Kady through the bookshelf. 

“I could use one,” Kady replied. Slowly and unsteadily, she removed her fingers from the piano keys and got up, moving toward the trio. Quentin had is head on Eliot’s thigh, eyes pouring over a book as Eliot brushed Q’s hair with his free hand.

Margo stirred against Eliot and moved away from him. “I’ll get one for you. Take a seat anywhere, I don’t care,” Margo said as she walked toward the table stocked with different bottles of alcohol. The options were limitless, Eliot made it so; he was always drinking and wasting himself away. Kady didn’t want to end up like him; drinking as a last resort to shed away the pain. Though she loved her mother and missed her, it was not worth risking her own health over. At least, that’s what her mother would’ve wanted her to do; stay healthy and live long. Her mother, she knew, was also not the best person in the world. She’d lied to Kady countless times, led people astray, but it didn’t matter now. It was dark outside, she was dead, and the world somehow felt a little less. 

“Here,” Margo said. “You look depressed so I made you a house special.” She handed Kady the glass with an unsure smile. Margo was so confusing to Kady; she believed that Eliot was the only one who could understand Margo and would ever truly understand her. She never let people in, that was evident. 

“Thanks,” Kady said gruffly. The drink was green, bubbling oddly. It didn’t matter, the color, the reaction, the texture, Kady would take anything that would possibly settle her nerves right now. “Didn’t know you could be so caring.”

“I’m not,” Margo replied. “I just know when someone’s sad and needs something to calm them. Just look at poor Eliot.”

She nodded her head toward Eliot who only gave a vague shrug in reply. Kady pursed her lips and ducked her head a little bit. Life had been so cruel and abominable lately; to everyone, it seemed, not just Kady. Maybe she needed a push; Penny was there, sort of. She cared about him, genuinely, but at times there were conversations left empty and unfulfilled. 

Kady took a long sip from the drink and reeled away for a moment from the taste; the potent and prominent liquid sliding down her throat with a subtle burn.

“My mom died,” Kady said. It was a test; the first time she’d said it out loud, recognized it as a statement of fact. “Recently.” Margo leaned out and put a hand on Kady’s thigh, some kind of affectionate response; Kady, shocked, almost recoiled at the touch. Tonight, in the dregs of the physical cottage, Margo seemed illuminated by the minimal lamp light. Her hair shimmered; eyes watching Kady with a nervous intent. Margo hummed a small note and removed her hand from Kady’s thigh, holding it out to her instead. Kady took it, unexpectedly. The former led Kady back to the piano in which she had pulled her away from earlier with the invite of a drink.

“Is that why you’re sitting here in the dark?” Margo asked in a hushed voice. “Alone at a withering piano.” Both took a seat on the cushioned bench. Kady could feel Margo’s breath brush against her ear and her cheek as she spoke. A warm sensation swam through Kady’s veins and she dismissed it as a reaction to the drink Margo had provided her with.

“Yes,” Kady whispered. This moment felt sacred; that if Eliot and Quentin, buzzed and dazed in the dim-lit corner, heard this conversation, it would actually begin to feel real. Kady didn’t want this to feel real; that Margo was being kind to her, sympathetic. She did not like being observed as a sad, manipulated little girl, but under the guise of Margo… If it didn’t feel real, she could let it happen, openly. “My mother used to pay for piano lessons for me. We weren’t close in that way, but she was my mother and I cared about her. I think if I’m ever able to bring myself to it, I could just play something; something to help me remember her life a little more.”

Margo reached down and grabbed Kady’s hands away, out of her lap, and set them on the piano keys. Her fingers trembled, shivering in the darkness. Margo reached over and clicked on the lamp beside the piano. The keys became visible in the light; Kady understood that by playing, right now, with Margo beside her, this moment would be forced to become real. She honestly didn’t know if she was ready for that.

“Play something for me,” Margo said. Her breath tickled Kady’s cheek once more and her fingers trailed along the keys lightly. “I won’t judge you now, but I might later. I can’t help it, it’s my fatal flaw. But perhaps if you just clink out something, it might air out some of the trouble you’re feeling.”

Kady nodded, moving one hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear. She looked toward Margo, who instead of looking at Kady’s face, was looking at the piano keys, where Kady’s hands rested. With a little hesitation surrounded also by doubt and worry and fear, Kady started pushing out a slow tune. 

Soft sounds vibrated around the room, tucking into cracks and crevices in the walls, furniture. Kady knew now that the people downstairs, only her and Margo and the added bonus of Eliot and Quentin, could hear everything. She wanted to shut herself out, put caps on her ears so she didn’t have to hear the melody that played.

When she finished minutes later, Margo gave a quiet clap and put one arm around Kady in a half hug. Kady must’ve been wrong when she assumed that Margo was the singular sober one out of the drinking-late-at-night trio. 

“That was beautiful,” Margo said with a generous grin. A pause besieged them for a second before Margo spoke up again. “Teach me some notes. I’ve always wanted to see if I was the next musical prodigy.”

“That’s quite unlikely to happen,” Kady said, almost laughing out loud. Instead, a smile planted itself on her lips; the first to happen in a week; the first to happen since her mother died. Who would’ve thought it would be Margo Hanson to make her smile?

“Why not?” Margo questioned. “My fingers are flexible and I have a penchant for memorizing the fuck out of spells. It could be the same with music notes or whatever.”

“Musical prodigies have spent years at their instruments,” Kady replied. “Also, everyone at Brakebills requires having flexible fingers and spell memorization or else no one would be able to cast anything.”

Margo simply shrugged. “Guess that makes sense.”

“But I will teach you,” Kady said, pouncing quickly on the idea to spend some more quality time with ‘kind’ Margo. “Just a few keys. Enough to play a short piece if you wanted to.”

That was good enough for Margo, who accepted the offer she had previously herself offered only moments ago. Kady had never been quite the best teacher for any subject of any kind, but she knew the ins and outs of a piano. It should be quite simple, she assumed.

Although, as Kady and Margo sat by the piano, the rest of the night began to crawl slowly into morning. Eliot and Quentin had passed out on the couch not long after Kady began to teach Margo, starting silently with the names of the keys. It also took Margo quite some time to play twinkle twinkle little star consecutively five times, and out of those she only swore about twenty times in response. 

“It never does any good to dwell on death,” Margo told Kady when she finally stood up from the bench, rubbing her sore butt in anguish. “Thanks for the lessons though. I have definitely crossed off musical prodigy on my list of things I have yet to accomplish.”

“A bucket list?”

“Sort of.”

Kady watched Margo head up the stairs; she swaggered slightly as she ascended, most likely out of sleep deprivation and not drunken stupor. They had been up all night together; taking away the toll of Kady’s mothers death for just only a few hours. It had been quite a few relieving hours. Kady sighed and rubbed her eyes before yawning widely. She too would need to take another day off again; this time not to mourn, but to sleep in mild contentment.


End file.
